Our holdings include hundreds of glass and film negatives/transparencies that we've scanned ourselves; in addition, many other photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs) in the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) They are adjusted, restored and reworked by your webmaster in accordance with his aesthetic sensibilities before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here. All of these images (including "derivative works") are protected by copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be sold, reproduced or otherwise used for commercial purposes without permission.

The Chain Bridge over the Potomac River circa 1865, with the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal in the foreground. View full size. Wet collodion glass plate negative by William Morris Smith. From negatives compiled by Milhollen and Mugridge.

October 1942. Long Beach, California. "Flexible performance of C-47 transport planes is due in part to their two 1,200 horsepower radial engines and to their three-blade variable-pitch propellers. Picture taken at the Douglas Aircraft Company. The versatile C-47 performs many important tasks for the Army. It ferries men and cargo across oceans and mountains, tows gliders and brings paratroopers and their equipment to scenes of action." View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer for the Office of War Information.

May 1938. Bench warmers at the cooperative store in Irwinville Farms, Georgia. View full size. 35mm nitrate negative by John Vachon for the Farm Security Administration. We met two of these characters in earlier posts.

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo blog featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1950s. The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.